


Music and Laughter, Music and Tears

by CarrKicksDoor



Series: The Secret Everyday Lives of the Avengers [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Background Relationships, F/M, Gen, M/M, Music, Playlist, really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 20:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1792351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarrKicksDoor/pseuds/CarrKicksDoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve looks back, he’s pretty sure that the presence of music in the tower starts with Clint.  Sure, Tony always has music blaring in his lab, but Steve’s hard-pressed to call what Tony listens to music based both on the sound and the decibel at which Tony listens to it.  (Clint has told Tony to get his head out of the eighties already.  Rhodey has told Clint that with Tony’s resistance to change, he’ll end up in parachute pants next.  Pepper tells them both to stop giving Tony ideas.)</p><p>---</p><p>How the Avengers deal with life through music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Music and Laughter, Music and Tears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [medievalfantasist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/medievalfantasist/gifts).



> This work actually has a playlist involved which you can find on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZjwWJoVceD_gMDqSXhgpPM-Ke1r14p-V (Alternatively, there are links within the story.) The exception is Bruce's white noise generator, which can be found at simplynoise.com. I've never done a hyper-mediated story before, so I hope you enjoy. (The playlist is not for the videos, though you might want to watch the tango one. I just couldn't get all the music on 8tracks.)
> 
> This fic started because I read all these "catch Steve up on pop culture" stories and thought--why doesn't someone just play "We Didn't Start the Fire" for him? And then I heard "Come With Me Now" on the radio and things snowballed. And my destruction of Western civilization is now 3% complete.

When Steve looks back, he’s pretty sure that the presence of music in the tower starts with Clint. Sure, Tony always has music blaring in his lab, but Steve’s hard-pressed to call what Tony listens to _music_ based both on the sound and the decibel at which Tony listens to it. (Clint has told Tony to get his head out of the eighties already. Rhodey has told Clint that with Tony’s resistance to change, he’ll end up in parachute pants next. Pepper tells them both to stop giving Tony ideas.)

It’s after SHIELD falls, when Tony has insisted they call come to New York to live in the tower like a mother hen worrying over her chicks, after Natasha has extracted Clint from what had been a disaster of an operation in Syria that Sitwell had organized, while Clint is still healing from the beating he’d taken, that Steve comes across Clint sitting by himself with a guitar, staring out over the New York skyline, singing softly about how [a man doesn’t have to die to go to hell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMAn-Ho5pLo). None of them but Natasha knew Clint before the Battle of New York, but Steve recognizes a man hiding pain, especially when Clint notices that he’s there and abruptly stops playing.   “Hey, Cap, what’s up?”

“Just wandering around,” Steve says. “Didn’t know you played.”

“Learned back in the circus days,” Clint says, too easily.   He waggles his fingers. “I got my first paycheck from SHIELD and went out and bought this guitar for a hundred and fifty dollars. It’s a piece of shit and sounds terrible, but I love it.” He strums out a few chords. “And at this point, it’s already beat all to hell, so I don’t have to worry about a few more dings and scratches.” He puts his pick between his teeth and uses his fingers to pluck the strings instead, playing a few licks, before retrieving it. “You ever play anything?”

Steve sits down next to him and shakes his head. “Bucky’s mom and dad had a piano, one of those old uprights that was never in tune.  He could play it pretty well, but his sister took it after she got married.   Wasn’t really a reason for a bachelor to have one. I could tap out a nursery rhyme or two.”

“Finally, something Captain America isn’t good at,” Clint says, smirking, swinging into song that Steve could almost swear was written [just for him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Yg9wjctRw), right down to a verse about a World War II veteran being amazed by the world that’s evolved in the last seventy years.  

***

Three things happen in quick succession. Thor comes to the tower with Jane, Erik Selvig, and most importantly, Darcy thinks, herself, because what. the. fuck. Stark. Tower. Then, Coulson, that bastard, shows up, not dead, with a bunch of people who are apparently the last pieces of SHIELD, and there’s a bunch of shouting and yelling that ends when Pepper Potts slaps her hand over Coulson’s mouth to get him to stop talking because Bruce is turning green. Third is that Hawkeye turns paper white at the sight of Coulson, stays in the room long enough to find out how he’s alive, then turns around and disappears.

The only reason that Coulson and his group of people are allowed to stay, Darcy discovers, (at least until hurt feelings subside and until Hawkeye comes back. Black Widow could probably find him, but she refuses to), is because he has information for Captain America about where the Winter Soldier might be. This is enough to get him back into Cap’s good graces almost immediately.

(Darcy also forgives him immediately because he hands over her iPod. She looks down at it, then back up at him, and he shrugs. “There’s not really anyone around who cares if you have it anymore.”

“You know I got a new one, right?” she says, cracking her gum as obnoxiously as she can.

“I also know that you pirated almost all of your music on there, and you haven’t replaced it,” Coulson says. “I’m sure JARVIS can transfer it to your new one.”

She narrows her eyes at him, then nearly tackles him with a hug. “Glad you’re not dead, G-man.”)

She walks into one of the kitchens looking for something more filling than a granola bar and discovers the captain and another man—Sam, she thinks—leaning over papers spread out on the counter of the island and talking, music playing in the background. “What’s shakin’, bacon?” she asks, opening the fridge. There are a couple of take-out containers, all of which are fair game unless they have a spider drawn on them (Black Widow) or a ‘B’ (Bruce, less because the Hulk will object and more because his leftovers are vegetarian). “Looking for Barnes, James Barnes again?”

Sam snorts and nods, but she gets nothing but confusion from the other man. “James Bond, Cap.”

“Oh,” Steve says, pulling out a notebook from his back pocket and scrawling something down.

“What is that?” she asks, snatching it out of his hand. “You’re always writing in it when I’m around.”

“That’s because you’re a walking pop culture reference, Lewis,” Tony says, poking her in the side to move her out of the way, as Darcy starts flipping through Steve’s little book.

“Oh, thank God, you did get him to watch _Star Wars_ ,” she murmured. “The Berlin Wall?” Darcy looks up, every bit of her political science education now offended. “Seriously, Cap, what kind of education did they give you on catching up with history?”

Cap shrugs, pointing at the ceiling. “Sam says this soundtrack helps.”

Darcy gives Sam a look. “But does this give everything he needs to know about history since World War II? I think not. JARVIS, my man. We need some Billy Joel up in here.”

“Of course, Miss Lewis,” JARVIS says, and because JARVIS is _awesome_ , he knows exactly what she means and starts playing [“We Didn’t Start the Fire”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g) from her old iPod. Darcy grabs a pepper grinder to use as a microphone and impresses both Tony and Sam with the fact that she knows all the words, and Cap just watches in amazement.

When the song’s over, she slams the pepper grinder down on the counter and points at him. “You get JARVIS to help you look up every reference you didn’t understand from that song. Once you have, you will have the basics of modern history from the end of the war through the eighties. BOOM.” She makes an explosion gesture with her hands. “Darcy out!”

Tony watches her leave, looks back at Steve and Sam and says, “I’m both slightly confused and slightly aroused.”

“Tony,” Steve warns.

“Seriously, though, she’s right,” Tony says. “John Lennon’s kid was being a little shit to Billy Joel about how hard life was in the eighties and how no one from his era knew how hard it was, and Billy Joel wrote the song to shut up him.” He pops a blueberry into his mouth. “’S a good song.”

***

The man formerly known as Nick Fury doesn’t have time to listen to music, motherfuckers. Why are you even asking?

(If Coulson lets slip that the man formerly known as Nick Fury has the [entire collection of Isaac Hayes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFvRvSxsW-I) on vinyl, there may be hell to pay.)

***

When Steve and Sam catch up with Bucky, Bucky is hesitant to come back until he realizes that four HYDRA bases have been taken out ahead of him. Clint’s been hard at work while he’s been gone, and when he drops out of nowhere (and really, being both an assassin himself and Black Widow’s partner, he ought to know better than to surprise another assassin), he’s able to give Bucky his assurance that they’ll keep taking care of HYDRA.

Between the word of his childhood friend and the word of a respected foe (somewhere, Steve read that when your friend and your enemy agree, you better take notice), Bucky nods and comes back with them.

Coulson is waiting at the tower for them, though whether he’s waiting for Clint or for Bucky, Steve’s not sure. He sits down with Bucky, shows him their progress to assure him that they’re working to take HYDRA down. Natasha gives him the details of how the Red Room fell when the Soviet Union did, probably how HYDRA got their hands on him in the first place.

Sam suggests music as therapy, since Steve says that Bucky used to play, and Clint hesitantly agrees. “It helped me,” he says, carefully not looking at Coulson.

(Natasha tells Steve the story, how Clint and Coulson had been together, then broken up. Coulson had started dating a cellist, but she moved away. The two men had just begun their relationship anew when Loki had compromised Clint.)

Tony and Pepper have a beautiful baby grand that sits on the landing floor for the Iron Man armor, and Bucky goes up there to play. Steve doesn’t remember him ever being that skilled, though Tony tells him in a low voice that playing would probably have been an excellent way for scientists to calibrate fine motor skills in his hand. Coulson, who is now back in almost everyone’s good graces, scowls as Pepper notes that Barnes mostly plays Russian pieces as Bucky starts into a piece from [Swan Lake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaUBsN6K_38).

Natasha suddenly straightens from her place where she’s leaning against the bar, and almost, without thought, begins to float into an arabesque. Pepper watches, mouth open, as Tony, Coulson, and Steve all exchange similarly bewildered looks, then turn as one to Clint, who is perched on the end of the bar and looks as entirely confused as they do.

The piece may be a pas de deux, but Natasha dances alone to the music pouring smoothly out of the piano until it ends, and her eyes clear, and her gaze turns on Barnes, hard and flinty. “Leningrad. 1968,” he says, then rubs his forehead. “I don’t know.”

He turns back to the others, and Steve sees a little bit of desperation in his face, because something has happened that he doesn’t understand. “Anyone know how to tango?”

Coulson throws back his drink and calmly stands, straightening his jacket. “Barton?”

Something ineffable passes between the two of them, and Clint hops down off the bar. “Sure. Go for it, Barnes.”

What follows is a [fast-paced bit of music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HDP6fYJGUE) and Clint and Coulson moving almost as one unit back and forth. Tony shakes his head and pours himself another drink, Pepper’s eyes are wide with delight, and Steve thinks that Natasha would be smirking if she wasn’t just a little bit shaken. In the meantime, he’s just a little bit blown away until they separate, taking a bow, and he and Pepper both clap enthusiastically. “I didn’t know you could do that,” she said, giving Coulson a push on the shoulder as he comes back to the bar, and Bucky starts playing Gershwin.

“Op in Argentina,” Coulson says, his eyes not really leaving Clint. “It’s not unusual for two men to tango. That’s actually how the dance started.”

Clint takes a long swing of his beer. “Used to be obscene for men and women to be seen doing it.”

“Then what do you call what you and Agent just did?” Tony says lecherously.

Pepper’s hand flies out to hit him on the shoulder, but Clint’s eyes never leave Coulson’s as he says, “Foreplay.”

***

Tony’s an asshole, so he goes into everyone’s phone and changes their ringtone so when Steve calls, it plays the verse from The Kinks’ [“Catch Me Now I’m Falling”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCR83LxGKkg) that says “This is Captain America calling.”

***

Laughter is the best medicine, and so it’s Bruce’s fault that Thor develops an obsession with sea shanties and Canadian folk bands. (There’s an argument to be made that JARVIS is also partly to blame, but Pepper, who is called into arbitrate, says it’s Bruce’s fault, and since no one wants to piss off Pepper or their robot overlord, it becomes Bruce’s fault.)

This requires some explanation.

There’s a competition in the tower over who can make Bruce laugh—not the sardonic smirk he so often gives Tony, or the dry chuckle he provides to most jokes, but a genuine, honest-to-God, guffaw. Darcy comes up with a theory that since happy is the opposite of mad, laughter can only be good for Bruce, and suddenly, she and Clint, particularly, are in a battle to see who can rack up more points by making Bruce laugh. There’s a whiteboard with scores and everything, with name printed across the top of the last person who managed to make Bruce laugh, then a list of names with a scoreboard. Darcy and Clint are neck and neck, but Pepper and Coulson both make a fairly good showing, especially since neither are at the tower much. It provides endless amusement for all concerned, although Steve doesn’t hear one of Darcy’s jokes first hand and he and JARVIS both experience the embarrassment of having JARVIS explain the peanut butter and jam joke to him. (Clint apparently shot beer out his nose at that one, and there was some discussion about whether Darcy or Clint got the points.)

(One morning, in Bruce’s handwriting, Melinda May’s name appears on the scoreboard in permanent marker with **1,000,000** next to it, and neither Bruce nor May (nor JARVIS) will explain, but every time May is mentioned for weeks, Bruce starts cracking up. Both Darcy and Clint protest that this is entirely unfair, but Bruce just calmly goes on, laughing to himself about whatever it is May said to him.) (There’s a pool going around that it was about Tony.)

But because laughter is the best medicine and Tony always tries to buy his way to the top of every competition, Tony obtains every episode of _Whose Line Is It Anyway?_ complete with the cut scenes and bloopers, and most of Bruce’s social interaction, outside of the lab, takes place with Clint and Darcy and anyone else, watching re-runs and the new episodes, trading terrible comments, and generally _actually having fun_ , which no one dares mention to Bruce, because they’re afraid he might realize he’s having fun and then go hide in the lab.

Thor is watching with them one night, greatly confused, when the cast of the show line up for the Irish drinking song game, and though he doesn’t understand what the hell is going on, he loudly proclaims, “This music! I have not heard much like this on Midgard. What sort of music do you call this?”

Darcy sits up, sputtering, “Why are you all looking at me to explain this?” because she _knows_ that she can’t just give Thor more of the Irish drinking game songs. “Um, JARVIS, you want to handle this one?”

“I believe,” JARVIS says smoothly, (and this is why it’s probably JARVIS’s fault, no matter what Pepper says), “based upon the style demonstrated here and the ballads that you yourself have sung, Master Thor, I can direct you to some musical styles you may enjoy.”

“Please,” Thor says. The episode of _Whose Line_ is over anyway, and JARVIS says, “This song is titled[ ‘The Night that Pat Murphy Died’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_LEBZHP2OA) and is sung by Great Big Sea.”

The song starts out slow, then develops into a rollicking load of fun that has Clint’s fingers itching for his guitar. Thor looks _thrilled_. JARVIS, who is better than Pandora, makes Thor his own station, and when Thor steps out in public wearing Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphy t-shirts, their sales go through the roof.

(Great Big Sea, however, becomes the first band from Midgard to make a command performance on Asgard. They play for nearly six hours and come back exhausted, but with musical instruments from Asgard, new songs, and a promise from Thor to sing on their next album, which they title _The Eddas_. They go to Asgard a band from Newfoundland known mostly in Canada and the northeastern United States and comeback a world-wide sensation.)

 

***

Bucky gets better and better, and he and Steve take up watching baseball again, but there’s the very difficult choice of who they’re going to adopt as their team now that the Dodgers have moved to L.A. Having been Dodger fans, they refuse to root for the Yankees on principle, and they can’t support the Mets. So taking out the Dodgers, the Yankees and the Mets, that leaves them twenty-seven teams to choose from.

(The Nationals have been trying _really_ hard to get Captain America to come endorse their team, and there’s a lot Steve will put up with for his public image, but this is _baseball_ , damn it, and he’s not going to do it.)

They finally settle on the Cincinnati Reds, because, as Bucky says, it’s nice to find a team that’s older than they are. (There are several, actually, but the Reds are the oldest professional baseball team.) This also has the added benefit of pissing off Tony, who grew up in L.A., who is a Dodgers fan when he can be bothered to care, and who grew up in the era of the Big Red Machine and remembers the Reds-Dodgers rivalry, and the benefit of pissing off Clint, who is a Cardinals fan (Iowa’s kind of close to St. Louis?), and the Reds are rivals of the Cardinals now. Coulson, perpetual fan of the underdog, and therefore a Cubs fan, simply shakes his head and says he knew Steve couldn’t be completely perfect.

(“Could be worse,” Jane says absently. “Could be Mariners fans.”)

In any case, the Reds are naturally ecstatic that _they_ are _Captain FUCKING America_ ’s favorite team, and during the big July 4th extravaganza held every year at the Great American Ball Park, they invite Steve to come throw out the first pitch, and Bucky comes with him. The major league pitching record is 105 mph, set by the Reds’ own Aroldis Chapman, and Steve and Bucky are probably the only people in the world who could beat it, but Bucky whispers “Don’t break the catcher’s hand, huh, punk?” before Steve goes out to the mound.  

Steve remembers to hold back on his fastball. (It clocks in at 98 mph. The Reds’ manager, Bryan Price, tells Steve that he’d love for him to come pitch for the Reds anytime, but he’s not sure if super-serum falls under steroids or not.)

They get a great box from which to watch the game, and there’s tons of great food (“This chili is _amazing_ ,” Bucky says around a mouthful), but Steve does think there’s something to be said for the cheap seats in the nosebleed section in left field.

But it’s Todd Frazier who finally introduces Steve to a kind of music that he really likes. So much of the music of the future hasn’t been to his taste, and the music of his past has been too full of memories, but as Frazier steps up to bat, the music he’s chosen to play is a soulful crooner that Steve doesn’t recognize. He turns around to speak to one of the other guys in the box. “Hey, can you tell me who sings that song?”

“What, Todd’s at-bat music?” the other man says. “That’s [Frank Sinatra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euci0_BBmNE).”

Sinatra’s somewhere between the present and the past, just like Steve, and he thinks it’ll suit him.

***

For all of the attempts to get Bruce to laugh, he does actually enjoy the quiet, and despite Tony’s suspicions, neither bongo drums nor mellow jazz are involved in keeping the Hulk at bay. (Neither is marijuana, although he’s tried. He can get high, but with his metabolism, it doesn’t last very long, so there’s not much point.)

What is involved is [white noise—or more specifically, brown noise](http://simplynoise.com/)—that keeps the background noises of the tower and the city away, leaving Bruce clear to think and focus on what he’s doing.

“I’ve heard of white noise, but not brown noise,” Pepper says, following Tony into the lab one day. Tony begins rattling off some explanation, and Pepper looks at him, then back at Bruce.

“White noise plays at every frequency within human hearing in equal amounts,” Bruce explains in English. “When you start adjusting the amounts, either randomly or based on mathematical formulas, you come up with pink noise, or brown noise, etc. It doesn’t really have anything to do with color. And different people work better with different frequencies. Brown noise works best for me. Then there are some people who just need a ceiling fan.”

“See?” Pepper says, turning to Tony. “Wasn’t that easy?”

Tony sticks his tongue out at Bruce when he thinks Pepper isn’t looking.

***

Steve’s sitting at the bar of the club, nursing a Coke, watching Bucky and Darcy on the dance floor and having odd flashbacks to the old days when Bucky would drag him out dancing and he’d end up doing the same thing, nursing a drink at the bar while Buck was out with a girl. It’s different now, because the club is dark, the lights are flashing, the moves are different, and to be honest, Steve _has_ been asked to dance by several girls and a couple of guys, but he’s stayed where he is, on a bar stool up against a wall, ostensibly the designated driver for the night (they’d taken a cab). The bartender gives him a smile and fills up his glass for what’s probably the tenth time this evening before leaning over. “You all right, Cap?” she asks.

He grimaces, having hoped no one recognized him. “Just keeping an eye on a couple of friends.” He jerks his head toward Bucky and Darcy. They’re moving closely together, Bucky carefully, probably unconsciously, shielding her from the other moving bodies on the dance floor.

“How long have they been together?” she asks.

“They aren’t,” Steve says. “Not yet, anyway.” But he’s seen Bucky’s eyes follow Darcy, kept his own private score of how many times Darcy’s made Bucky laugh, and watched Darcy deliberately make innuendo-laden statements and leave them wide open for Bucky to finish.

“You sure?” she asks, and Steve turns back. The music has changed to something [with a powerful beat and deep vocals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz2GVlQkn4Q) and he hears words that scrape raw over his nerves because they sound too much like the way Bucky can be now. He starts to get up, but the bartender reaches and grabs his arm. Darcy is flush against Bucky, and he has both arms wrapped around her, hands at the small of her back. She leans back, arching her back and running her hands through the fall of her hair, and with just a little shame, Steve sees Bucky lean over her to bury his nose into her neck. The rest of them don’t stop moving, and it won’t be long before what they’re doing vertically ends up in a bed horizontally.

Steve swallows hard, then downs the rest of his Coke. He peels off a twenty and stuffs it in the tip jar—refills may be free, but the bartender’s been running back and forth all night to do so. “If that asshole comes looking for me, tell him I’ve gone home?”

She tips him a lazy salute, and he pushes his way through the crowd and out the door into the relative quiet of the New York street, the beat of the music muffled behind him and takes a breath, out of the heat of the club.

Maybe he should let Natasha set him up with someone after all.

***

Most of the Avengers prefer high-energy music for their workouts (and Thor has a point when he says that Celtic punk is “music fit for the training of warriors!”). But when Natasha is by herself, especially at night, the music is soft, and Clint finds himself pulling on boxing gloves as [Simon and Garfunkel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUiVzQYBSiA) sing. “You all right?” he asks.

“Can’t sleep,” she says as he uses his teeth to pull the Velcro straps tight. “You?”

He shrugs. “Phil’s gone. You know how I am.”

“Got no reason to stay in bed or keep a normal sleep schedule,” she says, leaving the bag and climbing into the ring. “So you came down here just to have someone kick your ass?”

“My nose finally healed up,” Clint says. “It’s about time for it to get broken again. Might as well be you.”

She rolls her eyes and takes up a sparring stance. “Fine, go.”

The recording from the concert in Central Park keeps playing while they fight, both weaving back and forth, throwing punches and following boxing rules for about two minutes before it devolves into a real fight, the kind they usually find themselves in and the gloves come off. As usual, Clint knows he’s lost once Natasha finds a way to get her legs around his head (and oh, he knows there’s innuendo there), and lays there in the floor, panting. “You’ve really got to learn to counter that move,” she says, standing over him and smirking.

“I can counter that move,” Clint says, annoyed. “Just not with you. And you won’t teach me how.”

She shrugs. “Always have to have something in reserve.”

He shakes his head, because it’s not a matter of trust, but one of operational security, and after Loki, he doesn’t blame her.   He could kill Natasha a number of other ways if he needed to, and she could kill him a number of ways. It’s how it works. Neither of them should know all of each other’s tricks for that very reason.

“Why Simon and Garfunkel?” he asks.

She looks at him. “They aren’t Russian.”

***

After bad missions, it’s not unusual to find Clint holed up somewhere with his guitar, quietly picking out old hymns he learned to play on early Sunday mornings in the circus. Phil joins him when he’s there—Clint sometimes thinks he feels May lurking in the shadows—and once in a while Steve will come around too. (Barnes was there once, until he realized that he was singing along to Amazing Grace in Russian instead of English.)

Clint’s using his fingers instead of the pick, and Steve can make out the strains of [“The Old Rugged Cross.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emTMoLaRGy8) He sits down next to the archer and looks out over New York, glowing in the sunrise, just listening for a moment. “Do you believe?” Steve asks quietly.

He’s not sure Clint hears him—Clint doesn’t always, not without his hearing aids—but Clint finally sighs and says, “Sometimes.” He laughs, the kind of laugh that’s not really laughter. “What about you?”

Steve hangs his head. “I don’t know anymore.”

Clint snorts. “And you’re asking me?”

“Well, we live with two atheists in Tony and Bruce. Four, if you count Jane and Selvig,” Steve says. “Thor is kind of a god himself. Bucky’s got some kind of nihilism philosophy now, and I don’t know what Natasha believes.”

“Natasha’s Russian,” Clint says. “It’s a variation of the nihilism.”

“I used to believe,” Steve said. “Even during the war, when there were things I didn’t understand. But where do aliens fit in? Beings who were gods to us before?”

“Wouldn’t need faith if we knew, Cap,” Clint says.

“You still believe sometimes, though,” Steve replies.

“I don’t like thinking there’s not a purpose to things,” Clint finally says. “I don’t know what that is, or who’s in charge. But I think there’s something up there looking out for us. Phil thinks the same way.” He takes a breath. “Life sucks, Cap, and there’s no getting around that, but six people, no matter how super-powered, shouldn’t have been able to hold off an entire alien army. That’s got to tell you something.”

“It’s about holding on to what you think is true,” Phil says, approaching from behind them and sitting on Clint’s other side. “There’s a force for good in this universe, Cap. That’s what I believe. That’s what I hold on to.”

They all fall silent as Clint picks the melody back up, but over the New York skyline, three tenors join together – “So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, ‘til my burden at last I lay down…”

 


End file.
